“In no way can we say that anyone connected with the protests is involved or responsible for it,” Chief Reynoso said. “We still do not know what the motive is.”
First Works Baptist Church was founded in 2017, according to its website.
Mr. Mejia said the church has been on its current site for three years. The church, a low-rise street on a street corner, looks like a shop window, with restaurants and houses in the area.
“It will not really deter us from doing what we always do,” he said. Mejia said Saturday. “We are not afraid of this. It’s just a little bit in the way, and we’re still planning to have church tomorrow, of course not in this current place, but we’re still planning to have church, and when it’s all done, we’ll go back . “
The church is part of the New Independent Fundamental Baptist Movement, a network of 22 American and eight international churches known for their hateful rhetoric and calls on the government to assemble and execute gay people, the Southern Poverty Law Center, a non-profit organization that analyzes hate. groups, reported in 2019.
Mr. Mejia is an outspoken acolyte of the network’s leader, Steven Anderson, a pastor in Arizona who condemned widespread use for the celebration of the 2016 shooting at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, where 49 people were killed. the Southern Poverty Law Center said.
Mr. Anderson also gained notoriety in 2009 for saying in a sermon that he prayed for the death of President Barack Obama, and was criticized by the Anti-Defamation League in 2014 for what he calls his ‘history of anti-Semitism’.
Calls and an e-mail to the church from mr. Anderson was not immediately returned.
Mr. Mejia and mr. Anderson was among a number of church leaders who, according to the law center, spoke at a 2019 “Make America Straight Again” conference in Orlando, two days after the third anniversary of the Pulse massacre.